Market insights

Every now and again a deal appears that reminds me how this business really works. Not from Rightmove. Not from an estate agent’s mailing list. From a conversation. Martin is one of our Elite Acquisition Partners , and he’s worked with me for a number of years now. I’ve taught him exactly what to look for when he’s speaking with agents and viewing properties. So when Martin phones and says, “You might want to take a look at this one…” I tend to listen... Because the interesti

This property came to us in early 2024 . This is a typical deal we would buy.   We bought it for £300,000 , then auctioned it; it sold for £347,000 on 26 March 2024 .   Because it was probate , we qualified for stamp duty relief , and we did not spend a single pound on refurbishment.   On paper, some people would say:   “Why didn’t you do the work? You left money on the table.”   What happened next is exactly why we didn’t. What the Next Buyer Did   The buyer who purchased

On November 30th, 2022, the world met ChatGPT, and the rhetoric was immediate: The Bogeyman has arrived. The big players jumped on the bandwagon with a singular, terrifying message: It’s coming to get you. It was coming for your job, your creative works, your "stuff," and eventually, your very humanity. We were told we were "all doomed." I remember talking to the "proper geeks" about this, not the guys with graphic design degrees, but the Oxford and Cambridge PhDs in Mathema

The Daily Life of a Trader   People often ask what a typical day looks like for me as a property trader. They usually expect routines, systems, maybe a checklist. The truth is far less structured and far more constant.   The Day Doesn’t Start with Property   When I wake up, the first thing I want to do is empty my head . If there’s something in there, a thought, an observation, an idea. I’ll write it down or dictate it. Not because it’s content, but because it’s noise. Until

I get asked regularly what’s next. And when I answer, people often say what I’m seeing feels obvious .   Now, I’m not going to get it right every time — no one does — but over nearly 40 years in property, my record has been fairly spot on.   So when I’m asked when the next downturn might come, my answer isn’t based on prediction — it’s based on pattern. Right now, a few things are lining up.   Transaction volumes have been suppressed for most of the past decade. That usually

There’s a lot of noise in the property world about where deals come from and where you should be spending your time.   The dominant message in the training arena goes something like this:   “Don’t bother with Rightmove. Everyone’s chasing the same deals. You’ll never find anything on the open market. You need to go direct to vendor.”   On the surface, that sounds logical. And to a point, I understand where it comes from.   But my experience — backed up by real numbers over d

Consequential Debt: The Risk No OneTalks About For years we’ve been told there’s good debt and bad debt. Good debt, apparently, is leverage. Debt secured against property that allows you to grow a portfolio, recycle your cash, remortgage repeatedly, and “never sell the asset”. Bad debt is everything else. It’s a neat idea. It’s also dangerously incomplete. Because debt itself isn’t good or bad. Debt is neutral. What matters is what happens to that debt when conditions change,

Where Are We Now? Let’s start with the obvious: Most landlords already know the pressure they’re under. They can feel the squeeze. They can see the shift. And many of them, whether they admit it or not, know something bigger is happening underneath the surface. Because the truth is this: We are not just dealing with higher rates, more regulation, or tighter margins. We are dealing with a complete change in the direction of travel. For the first time in decades, the environmen